Do you think The Kiss is sexually provocative? — By 1897, radical artists in Vienna started disrupting traditional arts and culture. Artists and intellectuals, including Gustav Klimt, architect Otto Wagner, composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg, and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud challenged academic art and started associating themselves with progressive art styles like Art Nouveau. This was the rise of…

The transformation to a trillion-dollar company — An illustration created waves in the technology realm in 2011. One reason was that it featured the top tech companies of that period. But the main reason was the illustration of Microsoft, it caught more eyeballs than the rest. A group of pyramidal-shaped organizational hierarchies with one leader at the…

The wildest and weirdest imaginations of surrealists — Language confines our imagination. Art on the other hand is not worried about the words, nor about the sentence that follows the sentence to complete the idea. For a surrealist painter, the idea doesn’t even have to be perfect or complete. It just has to be. Exist! The visual vocabulary…

Deconstructing the reasons behind Michelangelo’s “men with breasts” — Michelangelo wrote in one of his poems, “I’m ugly.” He believed he did not meet societal beauty standards. Despite this, he spent his entire life in pursuit of sublime perfection. Michelangelo’s David is indeed the most perfect statue in the world. …

A game of political rivalry and personal aspiration — Pope Julius II had a monumental dream — to build 40 life-size statues in his tomb. For this ambitious project, the Pope chose Michelangelo. He mapped out an iconographic plan where the lower level would be dedicated to man (slaves), the middle level…

Beauty or terror, no feeling is final — A year ago, my mind felt constantly burdened. Frequently overwhelmed with an “information glut”, I constantly judge my actions. And even when working for hours, my productivity waned. Perhaps I was nostalgic; wanting to go back to simpler times. An anxious and self-doubting individual. Overstretched, burnt-out. At that moment, I…

Of butt-faced demons, sinister rabbits and many other oddities — The Medieval period is filled with bizarre and grotesque images — the ugly paintings of baby Jesus, grotesque marginalia and drolleries are just a few examples. My attempt with this article is to list bizarre and amusing medieval illustrations. …

The most elaborate depiction of Hell ever — Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights is a visual dictionary that talks about biblical narratives, religious sentiments and human morality. Each element in this masterpiece is filled with symbolism, which is mind-boggling, unsettling and leaves us with so many questions. Why, when and how would the man…

#2. Brit, in my past life — I’m an engineer turned writer and Youtuber. I worked in corporate for 10 years and resigned with no backup in my mind. I don’t advise this to anyone. I was lucky, we are financially stable and my husband has a full-time income. My past job entitled me to a decent…